True Ventures backs founders early, when most people aren’t ready to believe.

True leads pre-seed and seed rounds, usually as the first institutional investor, while the product, the market and the team are taking shape. From the first check you can call on more than a thousand founders who have been where you are. And we stay, through the exit and on to the next company.

The founder network

More than a thousand founders have taken a check from True over twenty years. Many are a few years ahead of you and have already made the decision you are facing. They answer each other’s calls about a hire, a first customer, the next round, or a decision.

Our job is to introduce you to the people who can help, when you need them, and then step out of the way. We host gatherings of founders and their leadership teams, dinners, and sessions with operators, buyers, experts and advisors. We make the introductions, and the community does the rest. It is also how most new founders reach us: one founder introduces another.

The founder network: every company True has backed, drawn by sector, with the lines showing which founder introduced the nextExplore the founder network →

Where we invest

We invest in markets before they have a name, across frontier tech, hardware, consumer, enterprise, and biology. A pedometer, a doorbell, a coffee cart, deep learning on the genome in 2015, and medicinal plants decoded molecule by molecule all looked small at the start. We back the founder before anyone calls it a market.

  1. 2006Automattic. A blogging tool. The open web, before anyone called it that.
  2. 2008Fitbit. A pedometer. Nobody called it health yet. IPO · NYSE: FIT → ACQ · NASDAQ: GOOGL
  3. 2010Duo Security. Two-factor login people didn’t hate. Security as a product. ACQ · NASDAQ: CSCO
  4. 2012Blue Bottle Coffee. A coffee cart in Oakland. Early is not only technology. ACQ · SIX: NESN
  5. 2013HashiCorp. A founder determined to change how the world builds and runs software. IPO · NASDAQ: HCP → ACQ · NYSE: IBM
  6. 2014Ring. A doorbell with an app. Three people in our network vouched for Jamie after Shark Tank passed. ACQ · NASDAQ: AMZN
  7. 2015ICEYE. Radar satellites the size of a suitcase. Founders determined to put the whole planet in view.
  8. 2015Deep Genomics. Deep learning to read the genome. Our first AI investment.
  9. 2015Peloton. An exercise bike with a screen on it. Founders who saw a movement, not just a machine. IPO · NASDAQ: PTON
  10. 2015Handshake. A career network for students employers overlooked. Now the largest, most trusted network for careers in the AI economy.
  11. 2018Bear Flag Robotics. Self-driving tractors. Founders who built robots for real work on real farms. ACQ · NYSE: DE
  12. 2020Enveda. Medicinal plants, decoded with AI. A founder convinced nature held medicines the world was missing.
  13. 2021Basecamp Research. DNA sequenced on an ice cap. Two founders turning nature’s diversity into AI that designs medicines.
  14. 2024Bluesky. A social network built on a conviction that people, not platforms, should be in control.
  15. 2025Sandbar. A wearable for talking to AI. Founders imagining a future beyond the screen. Too early to have a name.
  16. 2025Polsia. AI that runs a company. A founder betting that ambition matters more than headcount.

How we work

One partner is accountable to you from the first meeting. No one at True receives individual credit for a deal, so the whole firm can help, including the platform team. The first check is sized for learning, building, and ownership. As the evidence builds, reserves let us invest more. We stay through the hard decisions years later and through the exit, and seventy founders have come back to build their next company with us.

The team

Most of us have started or run companies before this one. We know the work is messy, and that the company belongs to the people building it. Our job is to do the work, make introductions, and be there when you need us.

Beyond the check

  • True Connect. The private community for founders we have backed: the people, the guides, the groups, and the events.
  • Connected Stack. Our enterprise AI summit, held each September in San Francisco with twenty co-hosting firms.
  • True Fellowship. A summer program for early-career builders.
  • Scrappy Sessions. A demo night for builders at our San Francisco office. Anyone can apply to show what they are making.
  • AI Office Hours. Pitch our partners’ AI personas and get feedback before you pitch us. Any founder, any time, no intro needed.
  • True North. Our newsletter. What the team is reading, writing and backing.
  • Playground. Products from True companies to try, with all of the above in one place.